


In Our Corner of the Universe

by TopHat



Category: Firefly
Genre: Date Night, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 23:35:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29444196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TopHat/pseuds/TopHat
Summary: Kaylee and Inara's first date, and the path which leads up to it.
Relationships: Kaylee Frye/Inara Serra
Kudos: 4





	In Our Corner of the Universe

Machines spoke to Kaylee, and sometimes so did people.

The first time Mal approached her to chat about something other than work had caught her off-guard. He’d talked about some things he’d experienced in the war, standing all stoic-like, looking at her but past her (the same way Daddy had done whenever the question of next year’s mortgage payment came up), finished up with a smile and a compliment, then left. She’d chalked it up to individual quirkiness, then gone back to re-aligning the plasma accelerators.

The second time it happened, Kaylee decided to start thinking of the other crew members as parts of Serenity too.

Mal was the control panel. Nothing could happen without him, and every motion needed his initiative to make any sense at all. Maintenance was mostly reviewing memories, making sure everything was where it was supposed to be, and ensuring that the whole gorram ship didn’t end up thinking it was still fighting the Alliance.

Zoe was the Nav computer, and Wash was the guidance controls. They were generally trying to do the same thing, but occasionally misinterpreted one another’s information disastrously. Being privy to both their random fears usually let Kaylee set the matter straight quickly enough, even if things would’ve resolved themselves eventually without her help.

Jayne was a loaded gun. Serenity didn’t have weapons, and honestly Kaylee was relieved that was the case.

For a while that was the crew. One pilot, one engineer, and three people who happened to work aboard the ship and call it home. Kaylee figured out pretty fast that the work involved tended to the south side of legal, but if she had half a platinum for every time that’d been the case back home she’d be rich enough to buy her  _ own _ ship, and near as she could tell the captain and his crew were on the up-and-up where it mattered.

(Well, except for Jayne, but he didn’t try to kill anyone regularly.)

Kaylee had figured out the Serenity, and then Captain decided to rent out one of the shuttles.

* * *

“I will not get involved with one of my shipmates, I will not get involved with one of my shipmates, I will not get involved with one of my shipmates, yes that includes the ones who aren’t daily tests of my committal to non-violence,  _ God _ why did this gang of veterans and felons have to pick up a single normal human!?”

* * *

It took Kaylee a while to figure out what was different about Inara.

She wasn’t wigged out by the Companion (well, she was, but only in the way any pretty person wigged her out). Inara didn’t radiate menace, didn’t make Kaylee feel stupid for not being able to words perfectly, didn’t seem to be perpetually off-beat relative to when ‘now’ was and wasn’t, and mostly didn’t cause problems (the initial manual docking incident aside). If you didn’t know it, you could almost assume she was normal.

It was that thought which made Kaylee sit up in surprise, slam her head into a metal pipe, and knock loose the cloud of silly that had been floating around her thoughts.

“She  _ is _ normal!”

Well, Inara wasn’t  _ normal _ . Kaylee hadn’t seen a normal person in her life, and frankly didn’t anticipate meeting any. Inara wasn’t, however, in need of repairs so frequently. She didn’t seek out Kaylee to talk about a war she only heard about in stories though, didn’t try to use her as a middlewoman between two sides to a marital dispute, and didn’t try to hit on her in the most nauseating way possible. Kaylee  _ didn’t _ know about the specific sorts of hells she’d gone through back when Kaylee was still learning what made engines go vroom, and also  _ didn’t _ know the shape of the secrets under those.

It wasn’t that Inara was spooky: it’s that she didn’t ask Kaylee to help keep her not-spooky, and in that way she did a better job of taking care of Serenity than any other member of the crew.

(Besides Kaylee, of course.)

Inara was still a Companion, Kaylee was still a mechanic, and the black was still cold enough to boil you inside out. Malcolm was still tied up in hating anything and everyone that tried to put a collar on him, Zoe and Wash were still in love without perfectly understanding that their partner loved them too, and Jayne had more screws loose than a L-90 freighter fresh out of the factory, but Kaylee didn’t put them all next to Inara anymore.

Instead, Inara was by Kaylee. A mechanic. One who worked with people.

* * *

“Yes, she is nice. She is also pretty. These two qualities alone are not enough to violate the promise you dragged out of the captain, nor enough to allow that smug  _ bastard _ of a captain to win. Think of the endless teasing, of the knowing looks, of how the two of you will only find peace in your cabin with the lights off, candles lit, and cups of tea in your hands as you let the day’s tensions slowly drain... away...”

“ _ Fei-oo! _ ”

* * *

It is rare that Kaylee gets a day off. If something on Serenity isn’t working a little below specs, then she probably has a role in a job. If she doesn’t have a part in a job, chances are she has shopping to do, for protein or new sheets or clothes or the things which allow her to get through life a handful of stars away from home.

But sometimes, once every emerald flash of a dying star, things would quiet down enough that Kaylee would wake up and realize she had no plans for the rest of the day.

Careful to keep her head empty, Kaylee got up, dressed, and walked over to Inara’s shuttle. Inara smiles when she opens the door, and a short exchange of small talk later they were laying down on top of Inara’s comforter, nibbling on flavored jellies while a drama played in the background.

Maybe what Kaylee was doing was unfair. Maybe it was on the person who made the first move to clear things up, and remove ambiguity. Maybe playing coy like this was a disaster in the long run, a wrench in the works that she was seeing and deciding not to fix because the risk of losing a hand to moving machinery was scarier than the idea of the entire ship going down in flames, stupid as the comparison was. Maybe this was going to be nothing more than the next wreck of a relationship left in a long line of burning crashes.

Or maybe maybes were for those who were too rutting afraid of failure and so never got anything good to balance out the bad.

* * *

“I like you.”

“I like you too.”

“... will we have to tell anyone?”

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“You’re okay with that?”

“Public stuff can be spooky. If you want to keep it in your shuttle, we can do that.”

“Mal might walk in on us.”

“I thought he wasn’t supposed to come in without your permission?”

“He isn’t.”

“I can put a lock on your door, if you want.”

“That seems like it would raise a lot of questions.”

“Then I’ll answer them. Besides, maybe you deserve a little privacy.”

“... I love you.”

“I love you too.”


End file.
